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☆ Here's the next yield play for fixed income as rates peak, according to BlackRock
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-30 | by ( Darla Mercado | Cfp | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

There is more to juicing yield than hiding out in money market funds, and BlackRock says now is the time to hop into high-quality fixed income. Indeed, the combination of higher interest rates and an inverted yield curve has made money market funds and Treasury bills tempting. "As rates appear set to peak with the approaching end of the Fed's hiking cycle, investors may want to consider stepping into high-quality, medium-term fixed income." BlackRock noted that intermediate and long-term fixed income exchange-traded funds have received $27.6 billion in inflows year to date, 15% greater than the amount of cash hitting their short-term counterparts. "At these levels, we believe investors are adequately compensated for long-term inflationary risk, given many EM central banks target ~3% inflation," the firm noted.

Persons: US3M Organizations: BlackRock, Federal Reserve

☆ Bernstein downgrades Alibaba on concerns of 'perpetual low growth'
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-27 | by ( Brian Evans | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Alibaba's low growth may be a longer-term headwind than previously thought, according to Bernstein. The firm downgraded Alibaba stock to market perform from outperform on Tuesday. "We upgraded Alibaba a year ago on the basis that the stock had discounted perpetual low growth, and that reopening would help support growth via better category mix. Alibaba's shares have traded in a range since — but while they remain cheaply valued, perpetual low growth no longer feels like an aggressive bear case," analyst Robin Zhu said. Zhu added that Alibaba is also contending with more issues beyond low user engagement and pointed toward higher search costs stemming from merchant crowding which is hitting merchant return on investment.

Persons: Bernstein, Robin Zhu, Zhu, BABA, Michael Bloom

☆ Your Amazon Prime plan might soon cut your cell phone bill down to around $10 — or even make it free
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-02 | by ( Steven Tweedie | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Amazon could be gearing up to offer "Prime Wireless." The low-cost cell phone plan could help Amazon boost its Prime subscribers, Bloomberg reports. Amazon may soon be dangling yet another perk in front of prospective Prime members: the chance to save big on your monthly cell phone bill. The company is in talks with wireless carriers about potentially offering a Prime Wireless plan that could range from $0 to $10 per month for Amazon Prime members, Bloomberg reported on Friday. Even at $10 a month, a Prime Wireless plan would represent real savings for most people.

Persons: Bradley Mattinger, JD Power, Jeff Bezos Organizations: Bloomberg, Mobile, Verizon, Wireless, Amazon Prime, Amazon, juicing, Prime Wireless, JD, CNBC, Alexa

☆ Pound heads for biggest weekly gain in six months
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-02 | by ( Amanda Cooper | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

LONDON, June 2 (Reuters) - Sterling headed for its biggest one-week rally against the dollar in six months on Friday, as U.S. interest rates looked increasingly likely to plateau sooner than UK rates. The pound has gained 1.5% against the dollar this week, the most since early December, and nearly 1.1% against the euro - which would be its largest weekly increase in nearly four months. Meanwhile, as UK inflation remains stubbornly high, traders have reassessed the outlook for monetary policy in Britain too. Money markets show markets are pricing for UK rates to peak at 5.32% by year-end, up from 4.50% now. A month ago, the expectation was that UK rates would be around 4.80% by December.

Persons: Sterling, Warren Venketas, Jordan Rochester, Amanda Cooper, Susan Fenton Organizations: NFP, Federal Reserve, Treasury, U.S, Nomura, Thomson Locations: Washington, Britain, Rochester

☆ Business Is Slowing. So Companies Are Juicing Profits.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-01 | by ( Ben Foldy | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com. https://www.wsj.com/articles/profit-numbers-get-spruced-up-as-business-slows-8eec5017

Persons: Dow Jones

☆ Former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke says there's more work ahead to control inflation
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-23 | by ( Jeff Cox | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty ImagesWASHINGTON — Former Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke, who guided the central bank and the U.S. economy through the Great Recession, thinks central bankers still have work to do to bring down inflation. Since leaving the Fed in 2014, Bernanke has been a distinguished senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. watch nowTheir paper notes that inflation has evolved since ballooning to a 40-year high in the summer of 2022. In a forum Tuesday presented by the Brookings Institution, Bernanke, Blanchard and other high-profile economists and academics discussed the root causes and what policymakers should do as they review policies for the future. The Fed only began raising interest rates in March 2022, a full year after its preferred inflation gauge eclipsed the target.

Persons: Ben Bernanke, Saul Loeb, Olivier Blanchard, Bernanke, Blanchard, Jason Furman, I'm, … Organizations: Federal Reserve, Thomas Laubach Research, Federal Reserve Board, AFP, Getty Images WASHINGTON, Former Federal, Fed, Brookings Institution, Peterson Institute for International Economics, of Economic Advisers, Harvard Locations: Washington , DC, U.S

☆ AI startup cloud deals by Microsoft, Google and Amazon ring 'accounting alarm bells' across Silicon Valley over revenue 'round-tripping'
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-19 | by ( Eugene Kim | Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

Some investors question whether these arrangements are artificially juicing cloud revenue growth. When Microsoft announced a multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI earlier this year, the deal made Azure the ChatGPT-maker's "exclusive cloud provider." There's another deal in the works with similar attributes involving Runway AI and a major cloud company. But they are drawing more scrutiny lately because they could artificially inflate cloud revenue, a key driver of growth for Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, according to Ted Mortonson, managing director of financial-services firm Baird. Is OpenAI a regular cloud customer that is getting no investment money from Microsoft?

☆ A year in Azerbaijan: From the Grand Prix to the ski slopes
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Words Cnn Staff | Photo Illustrations Woojin Lee | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +18 min

CNN —Anyone who has tuned in to the Azerbaijan Grand Prix has seen a tantalizing glimpse of what the capital Baku has to offer. This year’s Grand Prix comes at the height of spring, often said to be Azerbaijan’s most beautiful season. Juan Vilata/Alamy Stock Photo Explore Azerbaijan in spring Prev NextSummers in Azerbaijan are hot, so getting out of the city is a good idea. Alexander Melnikov/Alamy Stock Photo Explore Azerbaijan in fall Prev NextWrap up, because even at its coldest Azerbaijan still has plenty to offer. You’ll learn much more at the Azerbaijan National Carpet Museum in Baku.

Google used the term 52 times on its first-quarter call on Tuesday, up from 45 in the fourth quarter. Both companies said AI was already juicing sales, but neither said when or if they would start breaking out any sales, costs, or profits from the technology. Bing has lagged Google search for decades but Nadella said that Bing downloads had jumped since the addition of AI features and now had 100 million daily users. Toyama said Google already used AI to monetize their search algorithms and he did not expect AI advances from its rivals to be as much of a threat as some thought. Meta, which has admitted it is playing catch-up in AI, has published an AI model that can pick out individual objects from within an image.

☆ Tesla fans are buzzing about a suspected Model 3 redesign after an unverified photo circulated online
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-14 | by ( Nora Naughton | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Reddit post reignites Model 3 redesign rumors. Rumors of Tesla's first-ever major redesign are intensifying after pictures appeared to leak online this week of a refreshed Model 3. Tesla analysts have long suspected that a Model 3 redesign is in the pipeline for this year, and some Tesla fans have started posting suspected photos of these models online in recent months. Tesla is taking on the mass marketMusk has said Tesla aims to build 2 million vehicles this year, nearly doubling its 2022 production capacity. These moves, coupled with redesigns, are all but necessary in order for Tesla to truly compete with the likes of GM and Toyota.

☆ In the 'Garden of England', loss-making orchards are cut down
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-05 | by ( Sarah Young | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

The fruit that helped give the "Garden of England" its name hundreds of years ago no longer makes money so farmer James Smith is tearing down his orchards. Turning a profit from selling red apples to supermarkets has been a struggle for years, he said. In Kent, Smith is removing 80% of his orchards. Last year growing apples lost him 150,000 pounds ($186,000), a loss which would have been higher had it not been cushioned by other income streams from his land. He's also planting a vineyard and is growing small amounts of cherries, the fruit which legend has it prompted King Henry VIII to first call Kent the "Garden of England".

☆ Frank's founder just got hit with federal charges, but questions remain about JPMorgan's handling of the deal
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-05 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Drop any Wall Street (or non-Wall Street) questions you have for me here. A quick refresher: JPMorgan accused Javice of juicing Frank's customer numbers in a lawsuit filed at the end of last year. Prosecutors charged Javice with wire fraud affecting a financial institution, securities fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy. I've joked about it before, but Taylor Swift really should teach a class on this stuff for Wall Street. It's not the president or Wall Street or Congress that's to blame.

☆ Tesla's looks are getting stale, and Elon Musk can't ignore it forever
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-31 | by ( Nora Naughton | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Rumors have swirled about Model 3 and Model Y updates, but nothing official yet from Tesla. "When you move to higher-volume vehicles, you have to start keeping up with the Joneses," one analyst said. Rumors have swirled online about incoming refreshes of the Model 3 and Model Y vehicles, but Tesla has yet to set a release date for these updates. "When you move to higher-volume vehicles, you have to start keeping up with the Joneses," Fiorani said. This year, Musk has said Tesla aims to build 2 million vehicles, nearly doubling its 2022 production capacity.

☆ Consumers keep spending. That might not be good news for them or the Fed
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-06 | by ( Alicia Wallace | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +9 min

And by November and December, those predictions appeared to be materializing, when data showed consumers had pulled back during the holiday shopping season. During a month chock full of suprisingly strong economic data, the Commerce Department’s retail sales and consumer spending reports far surpassed expectations. “It’s not sustainable to keep spending above their means.”Eyes on the FedHearty consumer spending at a time like this is a double-edged sword, said Ted Rossman, senior industry analyst for Bankrate and CreditCards.com. “The resilience of consumer spending is probably the biggest thing that’s pushed this recession timetable out,” Rossman said. The Home Depot (HD) warned of flat sales for 2023 as consumers continue shift spending from goods to services.

☆ A Googler who lost her job in January's cuts says being laid off 'freed' her to launch a wellness business after suffering from Lyme disease in college
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-05 | by ( Sawdah Bhaimiya | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Emily Cahill, a software engineer, was one of 12,000 people laid off by Google in January. She told Insider she's starting a wellness club after struggling with Lyme disease in college. Cahill shared her journey with Lyme disease with Insider and how being laid off was a launching pad to start her own business. Lyme disease is a bacterial infection caused by a bite from an infected tick and includes symptoms like high temperatures, fatigue, and loss of energy. Being laid off 'freed' herCahill said being laid off "freed me up a lot" because work was so time consuming.

☆ Explainer-Biden's EV highway takes shape
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-27 | by ( Jarrett Renshaw | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

(Reuters) - Armed with billions of dollars, the Biden administration is embarking on the biggest transformation of the U.S. consumer driving landscape in generations, hoping to blanket the nation’s highways with electric vehicle chargers. The federally-funded chargers must be placed within a mile of state-designated electric vehicle corridors. FILE PHOTO: A electric vehicle charger is seen as a vehicle charges in Manhattan, New York, U.S., December 7, 2021. The state received 167 site proposals from 30 different teams, officials told Reuters. In oil-rich Texas, state officials told the administration, “the network will give Electric Vehicle drivers confidence and flexibility when traveling for work, recreation, or exploration regardless of distance traveled or weather conditions.”

☆ Explainer: Biden's EV highway takes shape
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-27 | by ( Jarrett Renshaw | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

[1/2] A electric vehicle charger is seen as a vehicle charges in Manhattan, New York, U.S., December 7, 2021. REUTERS/Andrew KellyFeb 27 (Reuters) - Armed with billions of dollars, the Biden administration is embarking on the biggest transformation of the U.S. consumer driving landscape in generations, hoping to blanket the nation's highways with electric vehicle chargers. The federally-funded chargers must be placed within a mile of state-designated electric vehicle corridors. Ready and pending electric vehicle corridors — designations that determine if a highway has a sufficient number of charging stations for EV travel. The state received 167 site proposals from 30 different teams, officials told Reuters.

☆ Analysis: Boom in European bank earnings hints at a rally with legs
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-23 | by ( Joice Alves | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

The euro zone is expected to stagnate rather than contract, while cost of borrowing is still rising. The European Central Bank's campaign to raise interest rates as it fights to bring inflation back to its 2% target has been a boon for euro zone lenders. In the meantime, euro zone lenders' earnings per share (EPS) have surged to their highest since the global financial crisis in 2008. In the United State, where the rate cycle is more advanced, there's less potential for earnings upgrades at this point, she said. Earnings euro zone banks($1 = 0.9408 euros)Reporting by Joice Alves and additional reporting by Samuel Indyk in London; editing by Amanda Cooper and Sharon SingletonOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Microsoft pushing you to set Bing and Edge as your defaults to get its new OpenAI-powered search engine faster is giving off big 1990s energy
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-14 | by ( Hasan Chowdhury | Shona Ghosh | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Microsoft was once king of computing, with more than 90% market share. Microsoft has integrated some OpenAI deep-learning technology into Bing, its ailing competitor to Google, so that the search engine can answer questions in a more nuanced way. And rather than just returning a list of results, Bing will present the information in a more useful way. What is less futuristic is Microsoft's maneuvering to juice its own market share as much as possible. Microsoft is juicing Bing's market share right now Shona Ghosh/InsiderAt present, Bing's share of the search market is a mere 3%, according to data firm Stat Counter.

Biden, who earlier last year signed into law a 1% tax on corporate stock buybacks, used his speech to call for that to be quadrupled, as well as renew his calls for higher taxes on billionaires. If companies sense such a tax is imminent, it might spur them to speed up buybacks and eventually shift toward paying dividends instead. "If this tax encourages companies to raise their dividends instead of buying back shares, all in all, it's not a bad thing." Other topics were also watched by investors, particularly remarks on China, a key area of interest for investors. BUYBACKS & BILLIONAIRESCorporate stock buybacks, where public companies buy back their own shares, thereby juicing the price of the shares as a way to return cash to shareholders, have grabbed headlines this year.

"If this tax encourages companies to raise their dividends instead of buying back shares, all in all, it's not a bad thing." Other topics will be watched by investors, particularly remarks on China, a key area of interest for investors. BUYBACKS & BILLIONAIRESCorporate stock buybacks, where public companies buy back their own shares, thereby juicing the price of the shares, as a way to return cash to shareholders, have grabbed headlines this year. S&P 500 companies' stock buybacks are expected to total $220 billion for the fourth quarter of 2022, with 2023 set to be the first fiscal year with over $1 trillion in buybacks, according to data from S&P Dow Jones Indices. Biden is also expected to call for another narrow tax increase: a "billionaire minimum tax" aimed at taxing the unrealized capital gains from assets such as stocks, bonds, or privately held companies of high-net-worth individuals.

☆ America isn’t quitting gas guzzlers yet
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-03 | by ( Jonathan Guilford | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

Ford missed its profit guidance by $1.1 billion, it said on Thursday night. It was bad enough that boss Jim Farley admitted to leaving “$2 billion in profits on the table” by mismanaging costs and supply. With EV sales under 4% of U.S. volume for both companies, the jump in profit from pricing is coming from combustion-engine sales. Detroit-based peer Ford Motor reported revenue of $44 billion for its fourth quarter on Feb. 2, 9% higher than analyst estimates. However, it recorded $10.4 billion of adjusted operating profit for the full year, below guidance of $11.5 billion.

☆ Mortgage rates drop to the 5% range for the first time since September
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-02 | by ( Diana Olick | In Dianaolick | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

The average rate on the 30-year fixed rate mortgage has fallen to 5.99%, according to Mortgage News Daily. That sent bond yields higher, and mortgage rates follow loosely the yield on the 10-year Treasury. Mortgage rates peaked in October with the 30-year fixed at 7.37% and have been sliding since then. Stocks of the nation's homebuilders have been on a tear since rates started to fall back and several are seeing 52-week highs today. Both builders reported seeing renewed buyer interest in December, attributing that to lower mortgage rates.

☆ Nissan has a plan for used Leaf batteries: powering buildings
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-30 | by ( Alexa St. John | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Nissan is partnering with startup Relyion Energy to ensure its used Leaf batteries are put to good use. What happens when millions of used electric car batteries aren't useful in a vehicle anymore? Nissan will work with Bay Area-based startup Relyion Energy to retire batteries from its well-known Leaf EV, Relyion announced Monday. After all, used batteries are chock-full of valuable materials like lithium, nickel, and cobalt. Tim Levin/InsiderHow it works: Nissan will recover used Leaf batteries and supply them to Relyion.

☆ Shining a Light (Literally) on How Much Dictators Manipulate Their Economic Stats
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-20 | by ( Josh Zumbrun | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

A view of Asia, as well as parts of Africa and Europe, as seen from space. It comes as no surprise that one shouldn’t necessarily trust dictatorships to put out accurate information—especially about their reportedly glorious economies—but it has traditionally been hard to say exactly how bad the problem might be. A recent paper, published in October, by the University of Chicago’s Luis Martinez shines a light on the extent to which autocratic governments might be juicing their estimates of gross domestic product, the commonly used measure of an economy’s size and might.

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